I was listening to a radio programme the other day in which a well known pop star was bemoaning the fact that he had spent so much time travelling and touring to promote his career that he no longer knew where 'home' is. It struck me that what he was talking about was a sense of place, that comforting feeling of familiarity with your surroundings. If you have lived in a place for a long time and put roots down I'll bet this never occurs to you. Nevertheless I believe it is an essential part of happiness and satisfaction.
Thinking about the pop star I reflected that my advice to him would be to live in one place for a while and investigate the local history. Even in a new settlement in the US, which is where he was, there is history. In Barlick we have the advantage that we have up to 10,000 years worth if we dig into it and as you walk round every building or nook and cranny can talk to you if you let it. Yes, that's right, it's another of Stanley's pleas for more observing and interest in our history.
How many young people know that as you walk past the War Memorial down Wellhouse Road there was a railway station on the right, a large goods siding on the left where the Green is now and a level crossing across the road where locomotives and rolling stock moved from the sidings on to the branch line heading out of town. The history of the railway in itself has kept many people occupied for a lifetime! Eventually you get to the stage where if you were to walk with me anywhere in the district I could tell you a story about anything you see, it can get that serious! I sometimes think that I never see anything through our modern frame of reference but as it was in the past and the connections that join everything together. If your reaction is"He's living in the past", you may well be right. To be quite honest the past is usually a far more comfortable place than the present!
How many times have you heard someone say "I'm bored!" Very often the younger end. My retirement strategy is to have good routines, always have a purpose in mind whether it's doing the housework or playing out in the shed. I usually have a book on the go that interests me or if everything else fails I retreat into my head and start thinking. That's what triggers articles like this so forgive me going introspective on you!
The message is that in the words of the old Scottish saying, you get back exactly what you put in. Being nosey and asking questions isn't a bad start. That can be another trigger for these pieces, someone asks me a question and I share the answer with you. I shall go in the shed now and if anything occurs to me I'll share it with you.

A busy level crossing in the 1950s.

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

So do I. Nice piece Stanley - thanks for writing it. Having lived in a number of locations here and abroad I sometimes muse whether their surroundings influence the character of the local people. Conclusion - yes I think they do - how can they not? but there are too many factors involved to generalise.

I cane across the word psychogeography a while ago. I think it really ought to mean what I referred to above, and perhaps in a sense it does - but a lot more besides. We could easily lapse into P.E's 'Pseuds Corner' here, and that would never do. I love the idea of being a 'flaneur' though.

It also put me in mind of Kipling's The Stranger which is perhaps an equivalent 'sense of people' rather than 'sense of place'.

We had a visitor to the Earby History Society Archive Room a while back who was looking at the connections between the landscape and culture of an area. Because it's Saturday night I can't remember the term he used for his study, I'll have a think about it.
I regret not having close connections to any area and sometimes envy people who have lived all their lives in the same town and are surrounded by family. Perhaps that's why I am so drawn to local history.

Sometimes it's hard to have a sense of place when you've been ripped away from your culture. There's always questions that pop-up every now and then like 'Where and how would I be living if we had stayed in England?' I've been here in Oz for decades, but sometimes that's just it, I'm just Here. Everyday life takes up so much time and energy and you just get on with it. Lots of people stay where or near where they were born and I think it probably gives them a sense of place and belonging, but because it's all they know, they possibly don't even think about it.

I don't really have a sense of place other than where I am at the time. It's been 14 years since I moved to Barlick and consider it my home now. I still visit Gravesend, the town I was born and lived in until I got married (1981) and then moved around South East London a few times until 2004. Even though I have my roots in Gravesend I feel no real ties to it, perhaps I'm just a 'wanderer'

Also most grey tops have memories about things that the younger generation have never seen. This fact was reinforced when I went into the Nelson library and at the local history section asked if they had any photographs of the Reedyford Hospital when it was a private house prior to it becoming a hospital. The young lady, very helpful but full of apologies, said she had never heard of it because she had only lived in Barrowford all her life. The hospital was demolished in 1986 and the Motorway built over it. Hospital.

Time has opened the world, our g.grandparents probably never traveled more than 20 /30 miles from home me from 1937 b. Victoria Inn, Hepwoth West Riding, https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Victo ... ,_Hepworth , the industrial buildings did not exist in my time,1947 my parents divorced and my mother and new husband took a pub in Hollingworth Cheshire, i stayed with my father until 1946 my mothers husband died and i moved to Hollingworth to help my mother, couldn't get another position as an engineering app. that i had in Victoria so started work as brew boy on the Woodhead railway electrification based in Derbyshire, got an apprenticeship in Hyde Cheshire, 1963 married a lass from Hyde,not well appreciated by her parents, they were both Lancashire!!, three daughters, born respectively, Lancashire, Derbyshire, & Cheshire .after completing my apprenticeship 1958 as a machine tool fitter i entered the plastics industry , 1968 moved to Connemara Galway Ireland involved insetting up plastic industries in the Gaelic speaking areas there, whilst there we had another daughter born Galway, in 1978 I moved east to Oldcastle Co Meath to run a new moulding plant, 1984 went to Alfreton Derbyshire to manage another moulding shop in 1987 was recalled back to Oldcastle.
During my life i have traveled to more than a dozen countries including U S A & Australia , not bad for a lad that failed the 11 plus, had broken homes,( my father married 4 times & my mother twice), survived wartime and rationing 2018 still married to the Cheshire lass and enjoying retirement, So i suppose i consider my sense of place as, where i hang my hat is home. bodger

I think however that Hepworth is still a bit special for you Bodge?
Tripps, your'e right, it was my formative years with loads of memories from the 1940s to the early 50s, this included my mother waking me up one night to show me in the night sky the blitz on Sheffield, my mothers family home place, 1947 winter, bodies moved across fields on horse drawn sledge because the roads were impassable, also p. o. w's., ,, digging out snow to clear the roads, aluminum strips hanging from telephone wires etc, used as some form of anti radar ?
Hard but Happy Times, bodger

As I have said " most grey tops have memories about things that the younger generation have never seen.". Weavers streaming out of the shed, Miners coming home still covered in coal dust, Railway siding shunting away all night, As you said Hard Times and thankfully most have them have gone. 'Did you find a photo Plaques?' Yes I did but only after a second visit when I made sure that one of the ex-Colne librarians was available in Nelson.

Lovely memories and I can share in all of them except for the miners, my workers were mill lasses in headscarves. I can still hear the shunting locos giving a burst of barks as they pushed a string and all the buffers clashing and all the old chain couplings clinking in the railway yard near us in Stockport.

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

I can remember when I was very young and was fascinated by watching railway engines pulling wagons across cobbled streets, no barriers, you just had to look to see if an engine was coming. It was in the area near Daisyfield Junction in Blackburn.